To contend with technology threats from China two US senators brought forward a bill that would make an office in the White House for safeguarding supply chains and combating theft The bill which aims to create an Office of Critical Technologies and Security was a bipartisan effort by US Senator Marco Rubio R-FL and US Senator Mark Warner D-VA Reuters reported Warner said in a press release that we need a whole-of-government technology strategy to protect US competitiveness in emerging and dual-use technologies and address the Chinese threat by combating technology transfer from the United States And Rubio noted that China continues to conduct a coordinated assault on US intellectual property US businesses and our government networks and information With the bill the senators are aiming to organize an inter-agency strategy to combat threats of a high-tech nature to national security by China as well as other foreign actors through the office According to the report the office would aim to make sure the supply chains of the government as well as non-governmental supply chains would not be compromised through reliance on manufacturers abroad Rubio said in the release that the establishment of the office would help protect the United States by streamlining efforts across the government The news comes as a trade war between China and the US ended up costing billions of dollars for both countries last year While agriculture reportedly felt the most pain a Consumer Technology Association-commissioned study found that the tariffs on products imported from China came at a cost of an additional 1 billion per month for the technology industry The trade war has also reportedly harmed the US construction retail manufacturing and markets through higher costs for goods The Dallas Federal Reserve said according to past reports input price pressures remained elevated in part due to tariffs particularly in manufacturing and construction and firms were struggling to pass these higher costs onto customers LATEST INSIGHTS Our data and analytics team has developed a number of creative methodologies and frameworks that measure and benchmark the innovation thats reshaping the payments and commerce ecosystem Check out the latest PYMNTS report on PSD2